In recent times, a great variety of bland soft drinks, such as bottled waters, club sodas, and seltzers have been marketed to the general public. These drinks have a strong following with health conscious individuals, who tend to eschew sugars, additives, syrups, and food coloring. It has been determined that a great percentage of these health conscious individuals would prefer to have more taste in these bland drinks, if it were possible to control the flavor enhancing substances.
The present invention seeks to make bland drinks more palatable by providing a bottle cap containing healthy and nutritious flavor enhancers. The bottle cap comprises a transparently clear, flexible bellows mounted above a screw-on or snap-on cap. The bellows contains concentrates of fruit juices and/or other natural flavors. The flavors are devoid of sugars, salt, fillers, additives, food coloring, and other harmful substances. The bottle cap is designed to be screw threaded, or snap fitted onto the standard lip portion of glass or (more frequently) plastic drinking containers. Upon application of a downward force, the bellows is depressed and the flavor enhancers are squeezed from the flexible bellows and injected downwardly into the bland liquid substances (hereinafter referred to as "water") held in these containers.
The bellows is hermetically sealed by a thin membrane disposed in the bottom of the cap. The membrane provides sanitary containment of the flavored substances inside the bellows. The bottom seal of the bottle cap is broken when the cap is attached to the bottle of water. In an alternate embodiment, the seal can be broken by an internal plunger disposed in the middle of the bellows, which is forced downwardly when the bellows is compressed. Pressing downwardly against the bellows simultaneously breaks the seal and injects the flavors into the container.
A hard plastic safety cap surrounds the flexible bellows to prevent the bellows from being depressed until it is ready for use. The safety cap is removed after the flavor enhancing cap is attached to the liquid container. Operational instructions and nutritional information are printed upon the hard, smooth surface of the safety cap.